As I’ve mentioned before, I live close to a ‘red zone’ in Christchurch. A red zone is an area that got totally munted in the earthquake of 2011, and the land was deemed uneconomic to remediate and rebuild on, so all the homes there got demolished and removed. Much of the red zone is by the Avon River, so we have ended up with cleared land and unused roads alongside it. Whilst it is a tragedy that people lost their homes, we now have beautiful areas that have been given over to recreation, long and short term projects, and community initiatives. I often walk the long way around the river to the supermarket with a small backpack on, if I’m only intending to purchase a few items, because it’s a lovely walk. I thought I would make this blog a pictorial about that walk.
The route alongside the river on unused road and footpath. They’re not maintained by the Council, but still seem to be holding up quite well.
The Fungi Farm – a mushroom-themed education, play and foraging area, with mushroom artworks in it. And a roadside plot dedicated to companion planting, with sweetcorn being the dominant feature at the moment, planted by the Richmond Community Gardens.Entrance to the Richmond Community Gardens, and the chook run inside it, which also houses the beehives for security from curious passersby who would lift the lids on them, and not replace them properly.The not-yet-finished takeaway coffee shop in a refurbished container in the Community Gardens opposite the river. It’s being worked on, but taking a while to complete, because it’s all volunteer work and being slowly paid for by income from the gardens. I’m looking forward to this being completed 🙂 In the next picture, this corner site along from the in-progress coffee shop is where an urban farm is being created. It will be offer volunteer working opportunities ranging from normal farm duties – planting, propagation and soil maintenance – to giving full-fledged walk and talk tours of the spaces, and establishing connections with the local community through meet and greets. And will sell fruit and vegetables at the gate – yay! A waste water treatment plant built I don’t know how many decades ago, but this and a couple more like it are the only buildings left standing along the red zone stretch by the river. The Avonside tennis courts, which don’t look too munted, but I’ve never seen anyone playing tennis there, so I’m not sure what the story is with them. A google search doesn’t bring up anything them that is current.A rower – not an uncommon sight.Heading away from the river along another unused road, and back into the built-up area. The road has this intriguing ‘Daisy Fields’ plaque at the end of it. I believe it is a tribute to what was once a popular field thick with daisies, which people would come to for picnics and to have rowing races.Haha – at the end of the road was also this group of rental e-scooters. I can only imagine how they ended up there 🙂 Finally, shopping done and on the way back home, I see these black boy peaches hanging over a fence which are beginning to ripen up. Christchurch has an active urban foraging network, so I reckon they’ll be on their list.
I’d love to see pictorials of other people’s local areas. I’ll do a few more amongst my blogs here and there, too, that aren’t all red zone 🙂 Maybe I’ll learn how to take better pictures, as well – lol!
14 thoughts on “Walking the long way round in pictures”
What a lovely parkway! Thank you for taking “the long way” to the store so we can share your views of your walk.
We have a similar area in Northern California that was decimated by wildfires three years ago: the state and the county governments have been at odds over whether people should rebuild their homes there, since it is very dry and prone to high winds all year around. I can understand why someone might want to build a house in the area—it’s rural and quiet and close to local wineries and fruit orchards. They also get better weather than where I live—they rarely get blast furnace summers as we do, and the winters are relatively mild. Still, fire departments have complained about the difficulty of getting to a fire on the winding rustic roads, and how it’s hard to put out a fire on steep, hilly terrain. They also get earthquakes out there, though nothing as devastating as the earthquakes in NZ.
Your photos are perfectly fine for blogging! I’ve debated whether to blow money on a fancy digital SLR camera, but my phone photos seem to work well enough on WordPress, and it’s not like I’m keeping a photography blog. If I go anywhere this year (and the trolls keep their distance), I’ll try to share more pictures on my blog.
I believe that California gets some fairly decent earthquakes, but not in built up areas, I guess. San Franscisco had a devastating one 30+ years ago, and I believe authorities there helped us with ideas on how to rebuild afterwards. A disaster response team, which included search and rescue personnel from the Los Angeles Fire Dept, also came to help us after our earthquake. It was a really frightening time, and we were so very, very grateful for overseas help. About three weeks later, Japan had their devastating tsunami.
I like seeing photos of where other people live, so if you do get around to taking any, I’ll enjoy looking at them 🙂
There are parts of California that get “seismic activity” daily, which surprised me when I first learned of it. I was also told that was a good thing, since these tiny quakes help release any buildup of energy between the plates under our feet. We’ve been seeing earthquakes in some unusual places like the Sierras, however: last summer there was a 6.0 quake near the Nevada border that we actually felt, 250 miles away. (It felt like someone was shaking the chair I was sitting in, plus a few small objects fell from my bookshelves. My older daughter, who was living in the San Francisco Bay area at the time, said it was like a large delivery truck rumbling past the house: the grandkids didn’t even look up from their reading.) There’s been some debate about whether climate change is causing this unusual seismic wave—some geologists say it’s tosh, others believe it is connected. All said, it is still scary to experience an earthquake, if only because you have absolutely no control over the circumstances. You can crawl under a table or desk, as recommended by our state’s earthquake safety office, but there’s no telling how long it will last or how violent it will be. I’m glad our state could be of help to New Zealand—we are part of the Pacific Ring, after all!
I might try to take some photos of my daily routine with the new phone. My life under the pandemic has been so boring of late, I really don’t take notice of its details, though I shouldn’t take it for granted. A friend in the Boston area spent three hours shoveling the snow off of his driveway and sidewalks yesterday, following an insane winter storm. Here in the Valley, if we got any snow, people would run out of their houses and act like it was the end of the world! I was also grumbling yesterday about how it’s too hot and dry here to plant the flowers I was accustomed to growing in the Midwest. I don’t think I would want to move back there now just to have hostas and tulips in the spring! I need to show more gratitude for my winterless town.
I must admit that a winterless town sounds nice 🙂 Please do show us some pictures of your local area while you’re going about your life – it may be boring to you, but won’t be to me and others.
Lovely post and photos. I was about to say my local walk to the shops would be urban(e) and unattractive, and how lucky you are to live there, but I remembered that I’m very lucky too and usually just too lazy to take the scenic route to the shops. We – my partner and I – live close to some of the most beautiful scenery in England, the Yorkshire Dales and North Yorkshire Moors, just a short drive away, and five minutes walk takes us off the main road along country lanes through fields, to our allotment garden where we grow veg, and soon after to a deep, wooded gorge, Nidd Gorge, along the River Nidd. This is still peaceful and relatively full of wildlife (everywhere having been decimated, of course, by human activity), despite several attempts by developers to build a so-called “relief road” around the towns of Harrogate and Knaresborough, which so far the locals have managed to fend off.
We’re also just a few minutes walk from Long Lands Common, which we part-own! A wonderful scheme started up in recent years. A group started a not-for-profit business selling prospective shares in order to buy a piece of land, currently mostly pasture, in order to develop it into communal woodland for recreation and rewilding. We joined along with hundreds of others, the money was raised, and the land bought, so we’re now proud to have a share in Long Lands Common, and hope we’ll start the voluntary work of planting trees, making paths and so on as the red tape gets through. This was started not just for the wider environment and community health and engagement, but as a deliberate ploy to make it harder for developers to start their round of road prospecting, which we don’t need and will only cause more congestion and pollution.
Thanks for sharing these photos. Is this what was known as the suburb of Avonside? I always liked that area and often went for walks there. Our first house in Christchurch was on Trent Street so not far away.
Yes, Richmond through to Avonside. I can certainly understand why it was devastating for people to have to leave this lovely riverside area, over and above the trauma of losing their homes.
It’s been about 25 years since I was in Christchurch. The earthquakes were devastating, but I’m so pleased to see it springing back to life in such a lovely way.
A B'Old Woman 
What a lovely parkway! Thank you for taking “the long way” to the store so we can share your views of your walk.
We have a similar area in Northern California that was decimated by wildfires three years ago: the state and the county governments have been at odds over whether people should rebuild their homes there, since it is very dry and prone to high winds all year around. I can understand why someone might want to build a house in the area—it’s rural and quiet and close to local wineries and fruit orchards. They also get better weather than where I live—they rarely get blast furnace summers as we do, and the winters are relatively mild. Still, fire departments have complained about the difficulty of getting to a fire on the winding rustic roads, and how it’s hard to put out a fire on steep, hilly terrain. They also get earthquakes out there, though nothing as devastating as the earthquakes in NZ.
Your photos are perfectly fine for blogging! I’ve debated whether to blow money on a fancy digital SLR camera, but my phone photos seem to work well enough on WordPress, and it’s not like I’m keeping a photography blog. If I go anywhere this year (and the trolls keep their distance), I’ll try to share more pictures on my blog.
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I believe that California gets some fairly decent earthquakes, but not in built up areas, I guess. San Franscisco had a devastating one 30+ years ago, and I believe authorities there helped us with ideas on how to rebuild afterwards. A disaster response team, which included search and rescue personnel from the Los Angeles Fire Dept, also came to help us after our earthquake. It was a really frightening time, and we were so very, very grateful for overseas help. About three weeks later, Japan had their devastating tsunami.
I like seeing photos of where other people live, so if you do get around to taking any, I’ll enjoy looking at them 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are parts of California that get “seismic activity” daily, which surprised me when I first learned of it. I was also told that was a good thing, since these tiny quakes help release any buildup of energy between the plates under our feet. We’ve been seeing earthquakes in some unusual places like the Sierras, however: last summer there was a 6.0 quake near the Nevada border that we actually felt, 250 miles away. (It felt like someone was shaking the chair I was sitting in, plus a few small objects fell from my bookshelves. My older daughter, who was living in the San Francisco Bay area at the time, said it was like a large delivery truck rumbling past the house: the grandkids didn’t even look up from their reading.) There’s been some debate about whether climate change is causing this unusual seismic wave—some geologists say it’s tosh, others believe it is connected. All said, it is still scary to experience an earthquake, if only because you have absolutely no control over the circumstances. You can crawl under a table or desk, as recommended by our state’s earthquake safety office, but there’s no telling how long it will last or how violent it will be. I’m glad our state could be of help to New Zealand—we are part of the Pacific Ring, after all!
I might try to take some photos of my daily routine with the new phone. My life under the pandemic has been so boring of late, I really don’t take notice of its details, though I shouldn’t take it for granted. A friend in the Boston area spent three hours shoveling the snow off of his driveway and sidewalks yesterday, following an insane winter storm. Here in the Valley, if we got any snow, people would run out of their houses and act like it was the end of the world! I was also grumbling yesterday about how it’s too hot and dry here to plant the flowers I was accustomed to growing in the Midwest. I don’t think I would want to move back there now just to have hostas and tulips in the spring! I need to show more gratitude for my winterless town.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I must admit that a winterless town sounds nice 🙂 Please do show us some pictures of your local area while you’re going about your life – it may be boring to you, but won’t be to me and others.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lovely post and photos. I was about to say my local walk to the shops would be urban(e) and unattractive, and how lucky you are to live there, but I remembered that I’m very lucky too and usually just too lazy to take the scenic route to the shops. We – my partner and I – live close to some of the most beautiful scenery in England, the Yorkshire Dales and North Yorkshire Moors, just a short drive away, and five minutes walk takes us off the main road along country lanes through fields, to our allotment garden where we grow veg, and soon after to a deep, wooded gorge, Nidd Gorge, along the River Nidd. This is still peaceful and relatively full of wildlife (everywhere having been decimated, of course, by human activity), despite several attempts by developers to build a so-called “relief road” around the towns of Harrogate and Knaresborough, which so far the locals have managed to fend off.
We’re also just a few minutes walk from Long Lands Common, which we part-own! A wonderful scheme started up in recent years. A group started a not-for-profit business selling prospective shares in order to buy a piece of land, currently mostly pasture, in order to develop it into communal woodland for recreation and rewilding. We joined along with hundreds of others, the money was raised, and the land bought, so we’re now proud to have a share in Long Lands Common, and hope we’ll start the voluntary work of planting trees, making paths and so on as the red tape gets through. This was started not just for the wider environment and community health and engagement, but as a deliberate ploy to make it harder for developers to start their round of road prospecting, which we don’t need and will only cause more congestion and pollution.
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Sounds great! Would be good to see some photos of it all sometime 🙂
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Thanks for sharing these photos. Is this what was known as the suburb of Avonside? I always liked that area and often went for walks there. Our first house in Christchurch was on Trent Street so not far away.
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Yes, Richmond through to Avonside. I can certainly understand why it was devastating for people to have to leave this lovely riverside area, over and above the trauma of losing their homes.
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It’s been about 25 years since I was in Christchurch. The earthquakes were devastating, but I’m so pleased to see it springing back to life in such a lovely way.
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I have to admit that it’s really nice, even though it was devastating for those who lost homes.
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It looks like such a lovely area. If I took pictures of my locale, it would just be gum trees and sheep paddocks. For miles and miles 😊
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Lol! Yes, it is lovely. I would still like to see pictures of your locale, though.
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I’ll take them for you
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Your pictures are just fine.
And you taught me a new word- “munted”!
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